Tag: Project: Bandai Stormtrooper

Mild weathering done with a mixture of Blue Black + Burnt Umber oil paint mix. Mid-way through this I remembered that Bandai plastic has a tendency to crack from turpentine. Hopefully this one holds like my Snowspeeder. It’s also at this point that I think the paint chips look too random. Oh well, chalk it up to lesson learned and I’m moving on. A semi-gloss coat is next and then I’ll dirty up the boots and do some light drybrushing on the black areas and then I’ll call it done.

Work was also done on the base that came with the kit. I decided to simply added a pile of rubble for one of the figure’s foot to stand on. The ‘height’ of the rock pile was done by initially adding a few pieces of cork and then layering some broken cement pieces I found in my home with hot glue.. The groundwork is 2 grades of sand from Woodland Scenics which were glued to the base with white glue. Unfortunately the white glue was too thin so quite a few of the groundwork came off in patches during drybrushing so I had to re-do these. A plus of re-doing is now I can add some uneven-ness to the groundwork. Grasswork were then glued on with white glue.

The terrain colors are simply a base of dark gray, mid layer of dark brown for the dirt, a wash of dark gray, then drybrushing with a light brown for the dirt and light gray and white for the rocks. The patched up terrain was dark brown, dark gray wash and a drybrush of light brown. I did this to add some variance to the overall colors.

Most of the details on the helmet are available as decals so I went ahead and added them and then brushed Future over them. Weathering is next and I decided to put the whole figure together and go from there.

After that I’ll add a base of some sort. I already have a pose in mind. Let’s see how it turns out. On a sidenote, a pleasant surprise so far is that none of the acrylic paint has chipped due to all the handling and posing! Nice.

No, not quite the Ewok village but yes, Ewoks are a savage bunch. Do not f**k with them.

Anyway, painting stage involves a base of black primer. Then I sprayed US Grey so the top layer of Dead White doesn’t need to be too thick to look ‘white’. I also tried to get the upper regions of each part brighter to simulate the direction of the Sun hitting the figure. Not sure how effective it will be though. I also added some salt chipping during the priming stage.

To break up the somewhat monotonous color, I decided to add some color bands on the white armor. I masked using Tamiya Tape for Curves which work very well for this and sprayed Bloody Red for the bands. I then handpainted some of the details on the helmet and lower torso with Black Grey. After removing the dried salt, I blended the chipping by adding US Grey and Dead White with a handbrush. I hope I haven’t overdone the chipping. I know all these details aren’t canon, but I’ll live with the fanboy rage if any. 😀

After this is a gloss coat, some decals and panel lining/wash. I’m thinking I should drybrush the black areas too. Let’s see.

Time for a more relaxed build after the F-86 I think. As far as I know, Bandai has never had bad fitting kits, this one is no exception.

The neck is a bit loose and I messed up slightly on the right shoulder pad so now it falls off easily but all in all, very straightforward and really looks the part. They even made the ankle joints stiffer so it can stand easier. It’s small touches like that that I really like Bandai.